New report evaluates how we can use energy better in buildings at a community scale
RASEI Fellow Gregor Henze is a co-author and co-editor on a new report from the (IEA) (EBC), evaluating the approaches aiming to use energy more efficiently in buildings and districts.Ìý
Decarbonization of the electricity grid and the electrification of transport, heat, and industry related energy consumption are at the heart of many governments’ policies to reach ambitious targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The energy consumed by buildings, in building them and regulating the temperature in them, account for about 35 % of global energy use. The integration of variable renewable energy sources into power grids and the growing electricity demand reinforce the need for energy flexibility, a key approach to improve energy savings. Buildings should be able to adapt. Adapt to weather conditions, to their users’ needs, and to the requirements of the energy grid.Ìý
This report, that brings together nineteen international experts from across the globe, including RASEI Fellow Gregor Henze, (who was also one of four co-editors), summarizes years of working reviewing the state-of-the-art methodologies for the evaluation of energy flexibility at the building cluster level. While there are technologies to provide energy flexibility at a single building level (such as smart thermostats), this work looks at harnessing savings at a larger scale, aggregating control at scales of multiple houses, buildings, even neighborhoods and towns. Energy flexibility on a community scale is the ability of a group of buildings, such as a neighborhood, an office complex, or a campus, to coordinate when and how they use electricity. Instead of each building operating independently, they work together in a coordinated fashion to shift their energy consumption to time when electricity is cheaper, more abundant, and cleaner. For example, on a day where it is forecast to be hot in the afternoon, everyone might want air conditioning. A flexible building cluster might pre-cool some buildings in the morning when more energy is available, stagger when different buildings ramp up their cooling systems, and use stored energy or on-site solar panels during peak demand hours. By coordinating amongst buildings the power supply can be balanced with the demands across the grid, while comfort for the building occupants can be maintained.
The report highlights that energy flexibility at this level remains a challenge, both in terms of technical challenges and hesitancy in adoption. These are challenges that are being solved. The report highlights innovations that address the technical needs and strategies that are being used to enhance adoption.
As we move to a modern power grid, the energy needs of the building sector will continue to be a challenge. This report contributes to the development of energy flexibility on an community scale, summarizing the technical and practical applications of energy flexibility. This review classifies and addresses four critical areas to systematically understand energy resilience (1. Defining energy resilience; 2. Understanding relevant disruptions; 3. Quantifying resilience and 4. Improving overall resilience), and identifies four main research gaps (1. Lack if a universal definition; 2. Understanding disruptions; 3. Evaluation metrics and 4. improvement strategies). The report then goes on to describe the development of energy flexibility characterization methods to an adaptive method, demonstrated through two case studies, and how these types of methods illustrate building-grid interactions. To move this forward the report also presents an open-source, community driven tool for forecast creation and evaluation. The power of this tool is demonstrated in a collaborative exercise involving 10 research teams worldwide. The results show significant promise, with the authors suggesting that more demonstrations of this approach across a broad range of systems will validate this approach and make it more robust.
While technical challenges remain, this report shows that the building blocks for community-scale energy coordination and flexibility are falling into place. The next step is moving this into more real-world scenarios. Using the technologies that have been developed in actual neighborhoods and communities to prove their effectiveness across different systems, environments and at scale.